Yazata,
I don't agree with your premise that faith is inherently irrational.
That's because our definitions are somewhat different.
Me: faith = "belief even in the absence of good evidence".
You: faith = "willingness to act in conditions of imperfect information".
The willingness to act that you're talking about here must, it seems to me, be based on a belief that the action to be taken is a justifiable one. But justified on the basis of what?
I don't need faith to believe that if I touch a hot stove I'll burn my hand. Such a belief is based on evidence - and perhaps on past personal experience. But I'd say that to belief that a leprechaun lives in my oven requires faith, because there's no good evidence for it.
Nor do I agree with the subject line's implicit suggestion that faith should be thought of as a path to knowledge, analogous to our senses and to logical inference.
My point is that faith, according to many God believers, can take one from a position of less-than-persuasive evidence to one of absolute confidence that God exists. At least, that's what they say. To go from "Maybe God exists" to "I know for sure that God exists" requires an increase in knowledge, as far as I can tell. So does faith provide this? Or something else? Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?
That's where I perceive circularity in this thread's argument. It seems to be starting out with the implicit premise that religious faith is something distinct from the kind of faith that scientists have in inductive reasoning and from the kind of faith displayed by all of us during everyday life.
I think it is different, for reasons I have already given. Inductive reasoning seems to
work. If it didn't, science wouldn't have progressed. Indeed, we couldn't achieve anything much in our lives if nature didn't display the kind of regularity that it does. Religious faith, on the other hand, seems like a "leap" that is not justifiable on the basis of anything much, other than perhaps hope or wishing.
And there's an initial presumption tucked in there that religious faith is distinguished by its being inherently irrational, so that after much waving of hands, the conclusion is reached that religious faith is inherently irrational.
I'm actually asking the question: is (religious) faith rational? And if so, how is it justified?
That's all evidence that the order of nature has remained constant in the past. But if the issue at question is whether the past might fail to be a rule for the future, past experience becomes useless. As David Hume wrote, "It is impossible, therefore, that any argument from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance."
Yes, I get all that. It's a nice philosophical point. My argument remains that scientists are pragmatic people. For that matter, so is everybody else in their daily lives.
Maybe your point is that religious faith
works to give people something they deeply desire - comfort, perhaps - and that is enough justification for it. But the "faith" in scientific induction that you've discussed is necessary to actually do any science - or make virtually any plan for the future at all.
Quite a bit [of faith is necessary to believe that God exists], since in my opinion the evidence for the existence of God is very imperfect. That's not to say that there is no evidence, a claim that atheists are fond of making. There's religious experience, miracles, the philosophical theistic arguments, no end of teachings from authorities and all kinds of historical stuff. Personally, I don't find any of it truly convincing and would assign it relatively low evidenciary weight. But theists think differently and choose to behave as if it was true. That conforms to my idea of faith up above: the willingness to act in conditions of imperfect information.
I agree with you that there is some evidence for the existence of God, and I also agree that to claim that there is no evidence is a claim that too many naive atheists make. On the other hand, I think the evidence is unconvincing.
I think that I have much better reasons to believe that Canada exists than I do for believing that God does. So I'm much more inclined to behave as if Canada exists than I am to behave as if God does.
Me too.